CodePlex refresh, FOSS projects more compatible with Windows

The CodePlex Foundation has refreshed its board of directors, gaining Apache …

The CodePlex Foundation has announced the arrival of several new board members, including Jim Jagielski, the Chief Open Source Officer of SpringSource. Jagielski, who was one of the original cofounders of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), brings a lot of credibility and leadership experience to the CodePlex Foundation.

When the CodePlex Foundation was established by Microsoft last year, an interim board of directors was assembled to help get the organization off the ground while permanent board members were being chosen. A number of the interim board members, including Novell's Mono project leader Miguel de Icaza, will be turning their seats over to new representatives. Former Microsoft open source evangelist Sam Ramji, currently VP of strategy at Sonoa, will be remaining on the board, along with Microsoft .NET Framework program manager Davies Boesch.

The function of the organization is to encourage more commercial software vendors to get involved with open source software development. Microsoft's role in forming the CodePlex foundation reflects the company's growing acceptance of the open source development model and willingness to collaborate with other commercial vendors on open source technology.

During a roundtable discussion at the Linux Collaboration Summit last year, Ramji made a case for Microsoft's open source efforts and argued that it is possible for Microsoft to embrace open source software while still competing with Linux. He talked about the potential for collaboration and the value that Microsoft can bring to the open source ecosystem. The foundation seems like a vehicle that Microsoft has established for precisely that purpose, but the company's past criticism of open source development and ongoing confrontational posture towards the Linux community have created a lot of skepticism.

Jagielski's arrival on the board will give the CodePlex Foundation a big boost in credibility. He is presently the chairman of the ASF board of directors, which means that he has a lot of insight into the management and operations of a successful open source software foundation. As the former CTO of Zend and current Chief Open Source Officer at SpringSource, he also has a long history of championing open source software in the enterprise.

"CodePlex has a unique opportunity to further increase the importance and acceptance of open source, especially within environments which have, up to now, been resistant to it," he said in a statement. "As the CodePlex Foundation continues to mature and evolve, being in the position to be able to help guide and foster the Foundation as a director is a huge honor."

Although some critics of Microsoft might question the relevance of the CodePlex Foundation, there is no question that open source software projects are increasingly embracing the Windows operating system. Geeknet, the company behind the SourceForge project hosting website, issued a statement today saying that "Microsoft has increased its engagement with the OSS community," leading to open source software projects' "dramatically increas[ing] compatibility" with Microsoft's operating system.

According to Geeknet, the amount of Windows-compatible open source software has grown from 72 percent in 2005 to 82 percent in 2009. Of the top 25 projects on SourceForge, 23 of them are compatible with Windows. Of course, these statistics, though intriguing, aren't necessarily authoritative evidence of closer ties between Microsoft and open source. The increase could partly be driven by the growing ubiquity of cross-platform development toolkits or a number of other factors. SourceForge's hosted projects are also not necessarily representative of the broader open source software ecosystem.

Anecdotally, we have seen some very compelling evidence that bringing open source software projects to Windows and Mac OS X can help attract new contributors. We looked at this phenomenon in 2008 when the popular Tomboy and Banshee applications gained cross-platform compatibility. The KDE project has also benefited from broader cross-platform support.

It seems clear that both the open source software community and Microsoft can benefit from the availability of open source software on the Windows platform. With that in mind, it seems like the CodePlex Foundation can be a useful instrument for enabling the requisite collaboration.